Round 2
by Von
Summary: Gabriel lets one brother walk the path of the other. Like all his 'lessons', it's a cruel one.


"_You know, Deano. I'm getting' reeeaaallly sick of that attitude."_

And with a snap of angelic fingers, the world changed.

{}

Cold Oak.

He'd recognise it anywhere.

Even now, almost forty two years later, he still occasionally dreamt of it. Generally only after Sam came close to dying again or, sometimes, after he'd done something that put the gut-punch of betrayal in his chest.

This was where it started. The downward spiral that flung both brothers out of each others gravity and sent them reeling. The night Dean made a stupid decision he honestly regretted, even if he was still stupid enough to do it all over again.

The sound of fighting grabbed his attention. Soft grunts and the wet slap of brute force meeting tender flesh.

He didn't remember _this_ bit.

Following the sounds, he jogged through the decrepit town and arrived an an open area just in time to see Sam – _Sammy_ – stagger to his feet. The bastard in front of him, Jake, looked shocked. He obviously hadn't expected Sam to get back up.

Remembering the state of Sammy's dead body, several patches of ribs that just _shifted_ as he'd carried him, he wasn't surprised.

But he _was_ damned if he'd let this turn out the same way as before. 

"Sam! **Down**!" He barked, drawing his gun and firing just as smoothly as Sam obeyed, dropping flat into the mud of Cold Oak.

Jake's entire body flinched back as three round buried themselves in his chest, one after the other. He dropped, face twisted in shock and fear and pain.

Dean booked it over to Sam, who was half-curling into himself and gasping for breath.

"Sam, Sammy!" He panted, dropping to his knees (_ohgodno_) just like before, except this Sam wasn't white with shock and onrushing death. This Sam was pink-faced with exertion, panting and shuddering and wheezing, skin slick with rain and sweat, hazel eyes staring up at him adoringly instead of apologetically.

Finally, for at least a moment, all was _right_ in the world.

At least, until Jake sunk a knife into his back.

On the 1st of May, the day before Sam's 24th birthday, Dean Winchester died.

_**Round 2**_

He wakes to an obnoxiously loud ringing bell, set right next to his ear.

"Ding ding ding! Round 2!" Gabriel crows. Dean snarls and almost gets his feet under him before the angel snaps his fingers.

This time it's different. He's not dead, or maybe he's a ghost or maybe he's just hallucinating. Maybe this shit isn't any realer than the arch-dick's Nutcracker game show.

...Then again, it had been plenty real for Sam's nuts.

Shit.

Whatever it is, he's not exactly having the time of his life standing back and watching Sam unravel as his own corpse gets grayer and grayer. This is one role reversal he'd never, ever, wished for.

Bobby is hovering around in the background, eying Sam like he's ready to leap forward to stop the kid blowing his own brains out. He can't seem to bear looking at Dean's corpse, laid out on the bed next to Sam, and focuses his attention on Dean's little brother instead.

Dean's grateful, because he's almost completely sure that if Bobby wasn't there, Sam would have pulled a little Romeo'n'Juliet by now and followed Dean out.

It's a chilling thought, no, _knowledge_. The knowledge that the Sam sitting by Dean's dead body, staring wide-eyed and so horribly silent, is half a thought away from suicide. That the only reason he hasn't already is because doing so would mean accepting reality. Accepting that his brother was dead.

Dean knows. He can remember.

He doesn't know why he's surprised when Sam leaps up once Bobby has gone to take a piss. Doesn't know why he's shocked when Sam winds up at the same crossroads he had.

He feels terror like a kick in the gut, however. Terror like he can't remember feeling before or even after Hell. Edging out even the terror of going back to Hell himself, is the understanding that the role reversal is continuing, that Sammy is going to suffer a lifetime of Hell just to bring back his stupid big brother who screwed up. Twice.

"No, Sammy! Don't do it!" He shouts, begs, but Sam doesn't hear him any more now than he had before. Dean is insubstantial to him, not even a flicker of EMF to show for his presence.

Sam digs, buries, waits.

Where Dean was dead-eyed and desperate, Sam is borderline manic. The demon, when she comes, doesn't even bother to taunt and torment him like she did Dean. Self preservation or a keen business sense has her putting the deal on the table, straight out. No bargaining, nothing. Dean's life and one year to spend with him. No loopholes. No _looking_ for loopholes.

Sam takes the deal so damn fast it _hurts_. He kisses the bitch, business like, but can't hide the relief, the fucking _gratitude_ in his eyes.

He feels indebted to the bitch, to Hell, for letting him let _them_ screw him over.

All for Dean's overrated soul.

{}

He wakes up back in his body and before Sam even makes it back, he's weeping like he never has before. Curled over, face in his hands, shoulder-shaking sobs.

It can't be. It's not fair! He wanted to change things, but not like this! Never like this!

By the time Sam gets back, grief and fear have morphed to shaky anger and he lays Sam out before he remembers that Jake has already tenderized his little brother pretty damn thoroughly. The guilt of adding to that just makes his next three punches hit the wall instead.

He explains everything to Bobby whilst Sam is unconscious – the deal, what's going to happen if they don't stop it – everything he can think of. He does manage to stop himself before he starts in on how he's really from the future because even Bobby can only handle so much, and resurrection is already pushing it.

Bobby promises to research and takes off. Dean gets Sam into the Impala and does the same.

He'll fix this. He has to.

He has months longer than Sam did – Sam had to work out what the situation was, what the terms were, all without Dean's cooperation. Dean has an advantage – he already knows everything. He even knows at least half a dozen of Sam's leads that went nowhere. He can do it.

He can.

Oh God, God _please_, let him do it.

{}

It's harder.

He doesn't remember it being this hard.

He remembers being afraid, trying all the time to not let himself think about it. He even remembers resenting Sam, more than once, for reminding him. Hell, sometimes, if he admits it to himself, just plain resenting _Sam_ for the whole thing, as utterly hypocritical and unfair as he knew it was.

Which was probably why he never let himself think on _that_ either. He was enough of a dick for going to Hell on Sam's watch. Leaving his little brother with false accusations of guilt would be Hell-worthy.

But this.. this is different. There's no vague or subconscious fear of the unknown, of the unimaginable future.

There's just terror. Bleak, black, hopeless terror.

For Sam.

Sam who just shrugs gently or shakes his head when Dean tries to get him to _listen_, to help him, to _fuck Sammy, please, it doesn't matter if I die – you're going to __**Hell**__!_

Sometimes he _hates_ Sam, with a passion that makes the whole post-Ruby + demon-addiction thing seem like a state of mild perturbment.

He hates him for making the deal, for accepting his fate, for being so _goddamn_ _grateful_ that Dean is alive, every single fucking day.

He loses weight and swears at Sam's worried eyes, his not-so-discreet calls to Bobby. Sam's only afraid of Dean self-destructing.

_Should of fuckin' thought of that when..._

Dean couldn't even complete the thought, choking on the hypocrisy.

At least Sam wasn't as much of an ass about hunting down leads as he was. Sam had had to fight _him_ tooth and nail to go places for him to research, often having to find a plausible hunt in the area, or something he could coax Dean into doing for fun.

This time around, Sam went wherever Dean drove and just tried to enjoy his last year of life. Dean saw him filling out credit card applications once or twice, doing something he hated just to try and ease the pressure on Dean. He was picking up the slack on hustling too and every so often Dean couldn't breath for the self-hatred of Sam spending any of his last moments doing something that he once confessed to Dean 'made him feel dirty'.

But he, damn him, needed every extra second he could. He wasn't the researcher Sam was. He was no slouch, of course, he was a goddamn hunter. But Sam had always just _enjoyed _the hunt for information the way Dean enjoyed the hunt for monsters. It gave him a speed and familiarity that Dean just couldn't match.

Time began to slip away.

{}

He'd flat-out banned them from hunting, sending notes on any hunts he could remember to Bobby to get checked out, but absolutely refusing to waste time doing it themselves.

Sam, wide-eyed and so fucking gentle with him that he could just punch him again, just agreed. Didn't put up even half so much of an argument as Dean had. Didn't try any guilt trips or speak of going out with a bang. As his time drew nearer and nearer, he seemed to be keeping his mind off of it by worrying about _Dean_.

And _God_, Dean just wanted to scream at him. It was like watching someone walk in front of an onrushing train and pause to ask if you were okay. They could fucking do that _after _they were out of danger!

In the last half of the year, Ruby came banging around offering snide clues and hints and false sympathy. Dean had _swore_ to himself that he was gonna gank that bitch the second she showed herself, but with no other leads and no options, he just couldn't bring himself to do it yet.

That said, he had no problems taking advantage of her ignorance and jumping her, stealing her demon-killing knife and threatening to gut her if she didn't tell him how to save Sam _right the fuck now_.

Ruby just stared, absolutely blind-sided. She didn't give him anything, of course, except platitudes and false hope and dammit, he _knew better_, he did, but still he let her go.

Hope, false or not, was all he had.

And he couldn't help but think – Sam was _important_. Not like him. He was a nobody, just one guy of any who could break the first seal. But Sam... only _he_ could kill Lilith. Ruby didn't know that Dean knew her master plan, and he could use that.

Because he knew.

Knew she wouldn't – she couldn't – let Sam go to Hell. She'd string him along, make him suffer. She _was_ a demon. But she wouldn't let Sam die. She wouldn't.

{}

He couldn't believe it when it happened.

He was already a wreck, weight had fallen off of him like dandruff. Sam had bitched and begged and bargained to get him to eat, to go to Bobby's, to _live_, but Dean hadn't. Couldn't. Not till Sam was safe.

Ruby had promised to hunt Lilith so Dean could stick her with the knife, but Dean knew that was a lie. She told him that Lilith held Sam's contract, which was reassuring. Lilith would let Sam _go_, right? Hell, maybe she'd stage her death to 'fool' Dean into thinking that was why Sam didn't get dragged down.

His hope had a more than healthy edge of hysteria to it, but it was more than he'd had before.

Hope. The ultimate double-edged weapon.

Sam had tried to drug Dean, tried to slip away, but Dean was way too familiar with his mindset to fall for it. They had a screaming row, minutes before midnight. Dean's phone went off, but he barely heard it.

Then demons kicked the door down, breaking the salt line. Lilith stepped delicately in, housed within a tiny little girl.

She smiled, baby teeth flashing white and cherubic cheeks dimpling as her tiny rainbow wellingtons kicked the goofer dust away.

She kept smiling, as her power held Dean down and hell-hounds tore into his little brother. Sam screamed as he died, ripped apart and savaged, the screams lingering even after his body stopped spurting blood.

Dean knew that Sammy was already there, meat hooks pulling him apart in Hell, waiting for specialised attention.

He couldn't hear himself screaming anymore. His ears rang and his throat was raw with pain.

He didn't notice Lilith giggling as she left. Didn't notice her power releasing him as he crawled to the bloody wreck that used to be Sam.

He begged. Begged Sam, begged God, begged the angels. Swore vengeance, plead for clemency, whimpered his apologies to a cooling corpse.

He woke up a little later, as if from a dream. He had a sense that his mind had just left the building for a time, flirting with insanity.

This time around, there was no Bobby. He didn't know what had happened before, when Sam had had to watch his brother torn apart before his eyes, but he'd at least had Bobby to help him.

Help him get out. Help him carry the body.

Help him burn it.

Dean had no-one and nothing. Only the thought of what Sam was enduring _right now_ kept him from eating a bullet.

He had to fix this. He _had_ to. He didn't even care if he couldn't keep Sam, he just wanted him out of _Hell_.

"Castiel." He croaked, gathering Sam to him. Bits of Sam stayed behind.

"_Castiel!_" He begged, gathering the bits as well.

"_**CASTIEL!**_"

{}

Castiel didn't answer. No angel did. Not Uriel, not even when Dean cussed him out for six solid minutes straight. Not Gabriel (he begged, shamelessly). He thought about looking for Anna and even tried calling to Zachariah and Michael. If they'd pull Sam out of Hell right now, he'd be their bitch and _like_ it.

No-one answered.

No-one except Ruby.

It turned out the phone call had been her warning them of Lilith's arrival. It was bullshit, of course. She had to have known sooner, but...

When she came, Dean had beaten her savagely, completely uncaring for the blonde girl's body that Ruby was hijacking. Ruby had let him, seeming to sense that he needed it or else the next move would be the knife.

He hated her. He hated her, but God, he needed her.

She was the only one who would _listen_. She was the only one who would talk to him, who would make promises, even if she had no intention of keeping them.

She forced him to eat, taking his abuse unflinchingly, knowing exactly where to hit him emotionally to get him to shape up.

It was hardly a secret. Sam was his linchpin, his everything. She could have told him the only way to get Sam out would be to have a sex change and Dean wouldn't have believed her for a second, but Christ – he'd still have done it.

She watched her mouth around him, though. The few times she rubbed it in, he just sort of blanked out and woke up to bloody knuckles and a demon's meatsuit so damaged it couldn't stand.

She brought him books, ancient and modern alike. She found him translations or keys sometimes, but mostly he had to farm them out through Bobby. It took time, time he didn't have – that Sam didn't have – and he could feel his fingernail-grip on sanity slipping, day by day.

But he couldn't let go. To let go would be to leave Sam alone.

He couldn't. He had to keep trying, he _would_ keep trying, to his dying breath.

He just couldn't help hoping that dying breath would come soon.

{}

He stared at her when she brought it up. Stared and wondered if this was how it was supposed to end.

If this was all he had to do.

God, he'd have done it months ago if he could. If it was the solution.

Why hadn't he thought to _ask_?

Ruby misinterpreted the look, hurrying to explain herself.

Sam, she said, was fed blood by a high-level demon during infancy. It was a part of him that lingered, because he grew up with it.

Dean, on the other hand, had nothing like that to fall back on. To use. To train.

He needed her, she said. Needed her blood, if he wanted a chance at getting Sam back.

Dean hadn't talked of revenge on Lilith to her, not once, so she didn't even try that tactic.

Instead, she talked about getting Sam. Just _going down and getting him_, like it was that easy if you had the power.

Maybe it was.

Sam had learned to destroy demons, to do what only angels and Colt's special metal could do.

Dean could do that too. Could do more, maybe. He was more motivated than Sam. He knew better, about how time in Hell was different than in the real world. He had the added pressure of knowing what Sam was enduring, for how long he'd been enduring it already. He knew that killing Lilith would solve nothing.

The moment when Ruby cut her wrist and offered it to his mouth stretched, sharp-edged and over bright.

He'd never understood how Sam could have made this choice. But now he did.

It _wasn't_ a choice.

He pulled her close and drank it like a shot of whiskey, single-minded focus on the end goal.

_I'm comin', Sammy. I'm comin'._

{}

He felt empty, the day he opened the door and Sam was standing outside.

Not happy. Not shocked. Not grieved or disappointed or relieved.

He just felt... hollow. With maybe a distant curl of self-disgust.

Sam was crying enough for the both of them, though. And as his little brother wrapped his giagantor arms around him, Dean finally felt something.

_Failure_.

He'd failed Sam. Left him there too long.

Long enough to be broken.

Long enough for the angels to deign to do what Dean couldn't for all that he knew the future.

Long enough for _someone else_ to rescue his little brother.

"Sammy." He sobbed, eyes dry. Behind him, Ruby quietly pulled her panties on under her skirt and left.

He let go, suddenly aware of his own unworthiness, his filth. Like Sam before him, the need to inflict pain, to _feel_, had changed. Whether helped by demon blood or not, Dean had slowly stopped beating Ruby and started fucking her instead.

He hadn't thought about it, exactly, it just made sense. It was easier to get the blood. It was better he take his pain and rage out on her through sex, than through something that could prevent her from searching for answers.

Of course, no logic or rationale in the world could change the fact that he – more than Sammy – should have known better. _Had_ known better.

And still, he'd done it. Given Ruby more and more of himself, in every way. Left less and less for Sam.

And he had thought he couldn't possibly hate himself any more.

{}

He tried to focus, after that. Tried to appreciate having Sam back, however it happened. Sam was out and Dean didn't give a flying fuck if the first seal had been broken or not. He'd have fucking broken it himself, it it meant getting Sam out sooner.

Angels flickered in once or twice, looking between Sam and Dean like they couldn't quite work out which was the lesser evil.

Sam hadn't started remembering Hell yet and couldn't understand why Dean was driving them so hard against enemies he couldn't quite define.

And Dean was having trouble just thinking.

He hadn't noticed it till it suddenly stopped, but the demon blood had another side effect than just giving him some varying psychic strength. It made him feel sharper, think better. Without it, he felt like a man living in perpetual exhaustion, limbs weary and mind dull.

He was irritable and bitchy, with himself and with Sam. He tried to explain what was going to happen but when Sam couldn't accept 'because I just know' as a source, he blew up at him and stormed out of the motel.

He threw up on the side of the road, moments later, remembering the _last_ time he'd blown up at Sam.

And yet, despite his best efforts, history seemed dedicated to repeating itself.

Except, as always, in reverse.

Sam started having nightmares, started getting clingier as he sought relief. Dean just got angrier, at himself, at the universe, and pushed his brother away more often than not. Every question felt like a jab at his authority, at his experience, at his failure. Every word of concern grated on his nerves. And every halting attempt to share Hell with him was boxed neatly away by his own defences.

Sam drew into himself, alone and hurting and angry and lost. He started feeling older, started despairing, the more and more he remembered.

Dean tried to remember why he should stop drinking the blood, why he didn't need to bust into Hell anymore.

Most of the time, he remembered it. But sometimes... when the craving was strongest, when his own mind worked against him to rationalize it, that was when Ruby found him.

And, more than once, he messed up.

{}

Some things hadn't changed.

They still wanted Sam for Lucifer's vessel.

It turns out that the blood fed to an infant once was worth more than an adult junkie who kept needing a hit.

It _was_ enough to disqualify him from being The Michael Sword – or angel condom, as Dean couldn't help but mutter. Much to his distaste, Michael had to break from his plan long enough to resurrect Adam and make a deal with the kid.

A deal that Sam and Dean had no hope of foiling. They had no Castiel in their corner this time, the angelic solider falling into line behind Zachariah.

The difference was... unexpected. The angel had been more than a source of information and power, a hit-and-miss 'get your asses out of the fire free' card.

He'd.. well, he'd been a fucking _angel_. He'd shored Dean up in ways that Dean hadn't even realised he'd needed. He'd helped Sam too, at least at first. But this time around, Sammy was facing the prospect of being Lucifer's meatsuit and not one angel looked at him with anything but distant contempt.

For a guy who had always, honestly _believed_... not just in angels and God but in there being good in the world to counteract the evil...

It was a crippling blow. Maybe even the final blow that broke the camel's back. Dean couldn't be sure, because without angels whispering in his ear, Sam hadn't yet cottoned on to the fact that Dean was more than just irritable and distant.

He hadn't staged an intervention, or threatened to gank Ruby. He sure as hell hadn't locked him in Bobby's panic room.

So Dean was still using, on and off. And, like with anything addictive, the unreliable schedule kept him strung out and on the edge. Needing it more and more, justifying it more easily every time.

He was, he could admit in his few moments of clarity, a genuine addict. Not just the slur-title he'd thrown at Sam like a knife, but the genuine help-me-because-I-can't-help-myself article.

Just like Sam had been.

And Dean had just told him to stop. To get better. To quit the blood and fall into line and to do it with nothing but anger and veiled disgust that such an order was even needed.

Hindsight really was a bitch.

Or maybe that was angels named Gabriel.

{}

"I get it!" Dean shouted, opening his arms wide as he plead yet again for an answer. They were cooped up at Bobby's, the distance between him and Sam an ugly thing, for all that they never seemed to fight anymore.

Sam was just a hollow-eyed automaton, ghosting through life. He hunted when Dean told him to hunt. Shot what Dean told him to shoot. Stitched him up and hustled for cash and never, ever, spoke unless spoken to.

Sometimes Dean actually forgot that this whole thing had happened because of archangel with a sense of douchebag humor only outmatched by his own innate douchebaggery. It had been a couple of years, after all. He was worn thin in places, felt like he'd worn the world out too, as he ran helplessly in place.

It wasn't until the night that Sam looked up from counting their cash and quietly, hesitantly, fucking _meekly_, asked what had happened to the stash he'd left behind.

For Dean.

In the shoebox of tapes that Dean hadn't managed to bring himself to even look at, ever since he'd stashed everything at Bobby's and taken off to find answers at Ruby's side.

And at Dean's baffled silence, Sam's face had heated up and he'd ducked his head down, shoulders up.

Embarrassed.

Embarrassed, that the nest egg of money he'd left for his big brother – the result of those credit cards and hustling that Dean had barely registered – had never even been noticed. Ashamed, that his attempt to help Dean move on, to survive, to leave hunting if he wanted to, had been so unremarkable that it might as well not even have existed.

Later, when Dean dug out the tapes from a box in Bobby's attic, almost fifty thousand dollars silently condemned him.

This last straw, this final, unintended blow from Dean to his brother, was what sent him reeling into the night. Begging an archangel to snap his fingers and take it all back. Swearing he'd learned his lesson – learned just how hypocritical he'd been, how he'd hurt Sam and then punished him for hurting. Driven Sam to the edge and then judged him for doing everything he could to not fall off.

Driven him to Ruby, then refused to forgive it. Rebuffed Sam's broken, wide-open arms with seething anger and self-loathing, too absorbed with his own pain to see Sam's as anything but mocking. To see Sam as anything but the brother who let him down, who couldn't save him from his own stupidity – not that Dean had even considered it his own fault. By then, he'd firmly believed something he'd only thought in his darkest moments before.

That he'd gone to Hell, to save Sam.

Like saving Sam from death was anywhere near saving him from Hell. Like sending himself to Hell, just to have Sam alive again was in any way an equal – or intelligent – trade.

If he'd just died – walked into a wendigo nest and died- he and Sam could still have been together. He hadn't known then what he knew now, of course. He hadn't known that heaven was real (if kinda low-budget) and that an afterlife was there to go to.

He hadn't known that the connection between him and Sam was stronger than death. That they, two of the precious few, could share a heaven for eternity and never face the suffering of Earth again.

But, he _had_ known that Hell was real.

Had been willing to face Hell than live alone, without Sam.

"Please!" He begged, eyes wet for the first time in a long time. Already, his limbs were beginning to shake with early onset withdrawal. He didn't think he'd be able to hide it from Sam this time, let alone Bobby.

"Gabriel." He fell to his knees. "Please."

Only the silence of a mid-western night answered him.

Then;

"That's a good look on you, Deano."

Dean's eyes closed. Relief, thankfulness, dread. He didn't even know himself.

"Try to keep that humility in the future, huh? I'm starting to get bored with you two knuckleheads."

And, with a snap of angelic fingers, the world changed _back._

**End**

I'm sure everyone has at least one bone to pick with the Supernatural writers or director, but my biggest beef was the sheer amount of 'lopsided' portrayal. It was like season after season of propaganda for Dean's noble, valiant struggle, with Sam cast as a two-dimensional episodic bad guy.

**Writing this was very therapeutic. :)**


End file.
